Agile – A failure story

Miki LiorVP R&D at stms

About Me

“SellALot”

• B2B e-commerce company- Born in 2006 – supplier of social e-commerce platform.

• Post startup phase.• R&D- 15-20 semi –happy DEV,QA and includes

FE team, BE team , QA and dev ops team.• Important- no automation, no unit test , no

build server for BE. Source control-svn. Bug tracking – bug tracker.

“SellALot” Before change:

The monster methodology

2010

We Need a change!2012

Angry client

Repeating bugs in production

Unsatisfied CEO

Change architecture-What, why, how

WHAT we want to change

• Low quality of deliveries• Deadlines not met very often.

WHY does it not work properly?

• No collaboration between dev teams (FE vs BE).

• No syncing between QA time table and Dev time table- long gaps between development and testing.

• Non realistic time estimations leads to non realistic planning.

HOW do we fix it?

• Avoid long development cycles by adopting ALM process.

• Using JIRA as a collaboration between all teams.

ALM in “SellALot”

• Avoid long development cycles by adopting ALM process.

• Using JIRA as a collaboration between all teams.

THE ALM

W-2Iteration content

W-1Tech specs

W+0W+2

development

W+2W+4

Testing

PMcontent

Dev TLRough time estimation

DevelopersTech specs+

final content

We Need a change!2014

Frustrated team

Slow delivery of features

Unsatisfied CEO

We go agile !

Agile Benefits For company(at least what we say to management)

• Revenue • Speed-to-market • Quality • Visibility • Risk Management • Flexibility / Agility• Cost Control• Business Engagement/Customer Satisfaction• Right Product

Agile Benefits For Development

• Have fun.

The Scrum Process

What you need to start?

Tech guy PO• Know how

create a backlog• Know how to

divide stories and fit them to sprint

• Know how to say- “this can be done later”

• Fixer – go to guy with questions about the process

• Know how to help the PO choose the right stories and prioritize them.

Difficulties and ways to handle

• How do you handle infrastructure\POC in agile? Answer: (if YAGNI – don’t do it) example : the grid component.

• How do you handle team structure? Answer : choose the most natural example: green option vs black option.

Team StructureBlack vs. Green

BlackGreen

DO’s to make agile success

• Define your DOD.• Don’t miss any ceremonies- all are important

but the most important- retrospective.• Short user stories that fit the sprint.• Adopt technical practices and fast –

automation , unit testing , code review and code convention.

• YAGNI

DONT’S to make agile success

• Agile is not culture. (blame game -> joint responsibility)\”Move fast and break things”

• Agile is not Agile but don’t force your company DNA to fully accept agile.

• Listen to the team and don’t ignore the conclusions from the retrospect.

• Don’t develop without business value.

DONT’S to make agile successScrumBut

• Go full agile and adjust the process accordingly (retrospective) and not using the “ScrumBut” methodology.

• "We're doing Scrum but..."• If you insist on getting all of your stories defined in detail before you start your first sprint.• If you have to run all retrospective decisions through management • if you skip one of the sprint’s meeting\ ceremonies. • we just let our Sprints run as long as they need to finish all the content.

Thank you!